Nelson, New Zealand

Saturday and Sunday, 26 and 27 January 2008

We've been looking forward to this - Feargal, Alison and Shane, friends from Sydney, are over in New Zealand on holidays. After meeting up with them in Kaikoura (about 2 hours north of Christchurch), we drive up the east coast to Nelson. It's not the easiest driving in convoy when you have our chitty-chitty-bang-bang campervan trying to keep up with the lads' zippy rental car but we just about manage it (a little too well at times, once nearly rear-ending the rental while a driver, who will remain unnamed, was taking a refresher course on how to use the clutch!). Highlights on the trip up the coast include a visit to Nim Bins, a roadside shack, selling the local speciality - crayfish. It was tasty but the visuals weren't great - the crayfish was served complete with beady eyes and claws. The hardest part of Cray's Anatomy (!) was avoiding the gut area and the half-digested last meal of the poor crayfish (known in the connoisseur's lexicon as the "mustard"). On the way up to Nelson, a game of "Tractor" - 2 points for spotting a tractor, 5 points for spotting a tractor dealership - nearly came to blows between the McKenna brothers over whether a largish seated lawnmower was a tractor. We have dinner that evening and a few beers afterwards in a couple of Nelson's nightspots. Our favourite was PHATS, a drum n' bass club that was pumping out dry ice like it was 1999. There was a slow start the next day but we made it out to the local beach for a swim, before we headed our separate ways - us to Abel Tasman National Park and Feargal, Ali and Shane to Picton for the ferry journey across to Wellington. It was good to see the lads again.

To see photos click here.